Updated the Finding Backgrounds tutorial with a new image since it was missing the "larger than" highlight, and also added in more information and made a few things more obvious.
@MizoreYukii I have a question I am going to attempt making a pose for my assignment (Don't know if it will work or not XD) and if I succeed, is there a way to make the pose glitchy?
@PeaceSign101 When I say glitchy, I mean the pose does something it's not supposed to do. For example, most people who make the "hand on hip" poses forget that there are sims who have large waists/hips, so the hands wind up merging into the body. Or when a sim with a big chest crosses her arms, the chest merges into the arm, causing a weird glitch.
So simple mistakes like that when making poses make it glitchy, so you can make a pose with the hands going a bit too far into the pose, etc. Not sure what else I can suggest for you, as I don't know what type of pose you're making. xD
@PeaceSign101 When I say glitchy, I mean the pose does something it's not supposed to do. For example, most people who make the "hand on hip" poses forget that there are sims who have large waists/hips, so the hands wind up merging into the body. Or when a sim with a big chest crosses her arms, the chest merges into the arm, causing a weird glitch.
So simple mistakes like that when making poses make it glitchy, so you can make a pose with the hands going a bit too far into the pose, etc. Not sure what else I can suggest for you, as I don't know what type of pose you're making. xD
Okay, thanks! And I think I want my job to be a photographer and I wanted my Sim in a kneeling position as if she was going to take a picture.
@PeaceSign101 Alright, I'll change that! As for poses, you can probably choose a glitchy outfit instead and use that, like a bag digging into her hip, or you cannnnn.....Hmmmm....Or you can make it so the arm just slightly glitches into her body....Or you can use a glitchy background instead.....Hmmmm....Not quite sure what you could do with that, but knowing the sims a glitch will happen regardless. Lol! xD
Did you decide on a country yet?
Good news! Almost done with the tutorials. Will be releasing the skin shading for sure tonight, and I'll probably be releasing a few of the other tutorials.
Bad news: One of the Gimp tutorials will definitely not be up tonight. While digging through Gimp and Google I discovered that one of the easiest ways to do something in PS requires you to download something for Gimp to get the same results, and this requires me to learn something new so you guys can benefit from it. I'm sorry, but there's really no way to avoid this since it requires messing with settings. The good news is that this should solve a lot of problems for those pesky backgrounds, so please be patient! I will be releasing the PS version before it though, so just take a look at it to see what you'll possibly be doing in Gimp.
Oh my it must have taken a great deal of efforts to do all the tutorials I really appreciate that and just take all the time you need @MizoreYukii , I'm sure we all can wait and it'll be worth it. Also good luck and all the best for your exams! I'm anxious on how I will be doing for the current assignment tbh, maybe I should look into making my own poses
@BabyCarrotz Thank you! Week 3 is so much harder because there are more tutorials, and they also double in numbers (sometimes) because I need to do both PS and Gimp, and this is where they definitely differ. v.v It's just hard to find time to do them all. Good news is that Eli is handling most of the tutorials after this week, so it will be faster during the last two weeks since I only have to translate where necessary. xD
I'm sure you'll do fine! You always do well each week, so I'm fully confident you'll ace this assignment. ^_^
Going to post the shading and smoothing tutorials now. I was originally releasing an updated Bliss' tutorial, but then watching it again I realized it probably wasn't necessary. If there is a lot of confusion, etc., about her video then I'll have to release the updated text version.
Tutorial 28: Skin Shading & Smoothing Intro Level: Beginner If you are still having trouble with something in this tutorial, or need more help, please post here or contact me. Click here for more tutorials
This is an introduction about Skin shading and smoothing. Skin shading and smoothing is when you edit the sims skin and natural shadows and highlights to make them more realistic. Shading is also a way to make them blend better into their environment. Skin smoothing is specifically meant to remove any errors from the skin, so weird discoloration or blemishes that the game creates on the skin.
There are a lot of ways to skin shade, and a few ways to smooth skin. Each one is unique and some people prefer one method over the other. We will be pointing out several methods for shading and smoothing, so choose which one you like best and practice with it. Feel free to switch between them or combine them, or even discover your own method.
Skin smoothing is usually done with the smudge or blur brush where you take the brush, set it on a low to medium opacity/strength, and then gently run over the skin with the brush. You avoid smearing or blurring too much and instead focus on making the skin look “smooth”, taking care not to touch the eyes or other important parts/details to the sim. So don’t run over the belly button, etc., go around it. Another method I have heard of people doing is drawing over the skin with the base skin colors. This is like skin shading though (you’ll see in the tutorials). Another method that can possibly work is using a blur setting on the sim, then going through and sharpening the important details. Anything like freckles and other minor details can be lost though, regardless of the technique used, which is why we go around these parts if we can. If they do become blurred or smudged, you can go back and sharpen or redraw the details.
Skin shading has many methods. I have seen some people do multiple techniques in one, and others only do one technique and call it a day. Some methods you will prefer over others, and some methods just don’t work for you. This is where personal tastes start to show up when it comes to editing, so feel free to choose whatever method you like best and not what others like best.
The first thing you want to do before skin shading though is adjust the “brightness and contrast” settings of your sim (works well with backgrounds too). This will make the natural highlights and shadows pop on your sim, leaving you with less work to do in the long run. You don’t want to contrast too much or make her too dark or too light, so only adjust a bit to get the shadows and highlights to pop. Contrast is mainly what you are altering. Of course, you don’t have to mess with the brightness and contrast settings since it can be a personal preference as well. You can also select areas and adjust brightness/contrast so it’s not a harsh effect. Gimp: “Colors” tab > “Brightness-Contrast”
PS: “Image” tab > “Adjustments” > “Brightness/Contrast”
Next is the easiest method of skin shading. You will use your burning and dodging tool to highlight and shadow your sims features. The tools will be kept on low settings, and on a fuzzy brush, so you don’t overpower the sim. We want to add more shadows and make the current ones better, not destroy them. (Bliss' tutorial goes over burning and dodging for those wanting to see this method. If you're interested in more tutorials for this method contact me, as we did not link them).
Here is an image with only dodging and burning. Note how the highlights and shadows pop more and the areas are now more defined.
The next method is drawing the shadows by hand. You will either use black or white, or the natural shadows and highlights of the skin as the colors you use to draw with. This requires more effort since you will be using multiple layers to create the right effects. This is usually the method that starts branching out and becomes different depending on each person. Some people will even combine burning and dodging with the drawing methods to give certain areas more of a pop.
Clothes shading is basically skin shading, and so far there isn’t much difference between the two. Clothes shading is also where you would add more shadow details to give the clothes a more realistic look, so adding creases and folds to clothes where you want them to be. This is basically practice for clothes drawing since you only have to focus on adding movement/flow rather than drawing the entire outfit while adding movement/flow at the same time. That probably doesn’t make sense at the moment, but it will when you start drawing clothes.
And there you have it, a basic rundown of skin shading and smoothing. Please refer to the tutorials linked for the methods to get started on skin shading. If any of them don’t make sense, please post so we can help. Also, Bliss’ method is using an older version of Gimp so something may be confusing, and even though she uses Gimp it can be translated to PS, but there are several things you need to be aware of when using it in PS.
PS’s “Overlay” is a lot stronger than Gimp’s “Overlay”. You will need to use either soft light or lower the opacity on the original shading layer rather than keeping it at 100% (you’ll understand when you watch it).
The Gaussian blurs work a bit differently from each other, where one seems to spread out more than the other one, and Gimp can repeat the Gaussian blur at the same setting where PS seems to lower that setting when using the repeat button. It’s a bit odd.
There may be a few others, but basically it can be used in PS but a few things need to be adjusted for it to work.
Tutorial 28: – Skin Smoothing (Both) (by Eliavah) Level: Beginner If you are still having trouble with something in this tutorial, or need more help, please post here or contact me. Click here for more tutorials
Hallo everyone c: I am Eliavah and I'm here to teach you my way to make skin pretty & smooth, and skin shade! Just a friendly reminder, there are many, many ways to skin smooth & shade, and honestly I experiment with many ways often. So feel free to take some bits of this tutorial and adapt it to your own! Now first things first, you obviously need to have a photo!
This is my Sims Survivor photo, raw and unedited! Yes that is the time blacked out . . . you don't need to see my absurd times I am up xD . Anyways this photo may look a little brighter than most sims photos do, but I promise you it isn't edited! The thing I use is a SweetFX mod for my game (by BrntWaffles). It makes your game brighter and sharper! If you guys have any questions about that feel free to ask Mizzie or I, but it is totally not needed for this tutorial. So first things first you'll need to cut your sim out, and place onto your background. Read Mizzie's tutorials for help on cutting out! Unless you don't plan on cutting your sim out then you can skip that c: (This tutorial is not tested for non-cutout Sims though.)
So I have my photo cut out onto my background. All I did here was cut her out, place her on background, removed the green (or other background color), which is all covered in previous tutorials, and I rotated her to fit the angle of this specific background. Nothing fancy here! Now as you can see…There is some weird pixilation in her skin...it's not very smooth and looks eh…Also there is some weird sharp spots! A lot to fix huh? Honestly it's really simple, and quick c:
First things first, let’s fix the pixilation! What you're going to do is copy your sims cut out layer, if you didn't cut out your sim, you'd copy your whole image. Honestly though I can't tell you how this works without cutting out, so I highly suggest you cut out your sim c:. We are going to work on the copy image, in case we make any mistakes, we don't have to close and re-open, or even worse, re cut out our sim . So after copying that layer, you can go ahead and hide your original sim cut out layer, and let’s make a new layer (not a copy!) underneath our copy sim layer. So it should look like this!
Alright take your color dropper tool, and pick a color that is the medium tone for your sim's skin. I usually pick a color around the cheeks of face. Or the forehead if you have a blush on. You can also do around collar bones or stomach, but it doesn't matter. As long as it isn't the lighter or the dark part of your sim's skin tone. It can be a little dark, or a little light, but just make sure it's still in the middle spectrum. Now “ctrl + left click” (Alt + Left click for Gimp) on your Sim Cut Out layer (doesn't matter if it’s the copy or not as long as your selection is your sim). Now go to your Layer Underneath Copy layer. Go to edit ---> Fill and just make sure the setting is Foreground color (“Edit” tab, then “Fill with FG Color” in Gimp, or use bucket tool)! Hit okay and if you hide your sim cut out copy real quick it should look something like that. You don't have to hide your sim cut out copy layer, but you should, to make sure it looks something along the lines as such (Photo marked with 3.)
Now we can get to the good stuff! Go to your Sim Cut Out copy layer (do not touch layer underneath copy layer!). The reason we made that filled with a midtone of our sims skintone, is because what were are about to do is smudge our sims skin basically, but precisely and carefully. However smudging leads to spots turning transparent and weird….but with that layer underneath it will not look transparent! You can either keep your selection around your sim, or deselect it. It really doesn't matter, and we can always reselect it later down the line. I always just deselect my sim, because the lines get in my way just a bit. So let’s grab our smudging tool, set it to a low percentage, I like to use 8%., it’s better to gradually smudge then do too much smudging due to a high percentage and constantly having to undo because it looks too blurred out. Now I usually use a Custom Brush for this, but the sake of this tutorial I will be using a soft 0% hardness brush (hardness is not a setting in Gimp, so ignore that and just choose a hard brush) that can easily be found in the default brush set. Now zoom in and get to smudging! Note though, you do not want to smudge your Sims lips, eyes nose, and any clothes or fine details. You are smudging the weird pixilation and some sharpness away.
Adjusting my brush sizes constantly, bigger brush for bigger areas, smaller for finer details, I smudge all around. The parts I circled in 1. I also smudge, but use smaller brushes to do so. Use a really small brush when doing mouth corners, as you don't want to smudge your lipstick, yikes! I just go around though, and smudge all that weird pixilation away. (This is not a perfect smudge as I'm not accustomed to using a mouse as opposed to tablet, but you can fine detail this more than I c: ) Also you can see that sort of weird sharpness is gone. Awesome! However there are some problems still, some weird sharpness still, and sometimes (not always) smudging causes a weird glow effect to your sim, also we have some of that skin color layer underneath Sim cut out copy layer sticking out!
**Do not smudge any tattoos on your sim**
Don't fret little one! I will help you fix all your problems and more~. Let's go ahead and ctrl click (alt + click in Gimp) on the thumbnail of “Layer Underneath Copy” layer. This should select that fill we did earlier. Go ahead to Select –> Modify → Contract (Select > Shrink in Gimp), and let’s set this to 1 pixel. Now go back to Select, but this time hit Inverse. This basically made it so your selection is not your sim, but around it. We contracted it because we want to erase the little bits. So now just use an eraser, or go to Edit → Clear and bye bye leftovers! See you post thanksgiving . Now we have one more task at hand when it comes to smoothing, the sharp parts! Lets just go ahead and merge our Sim Cut Out layer, and Layer Underneath copy layer.
** If you have any glowing around your sim, you would repeat this step, though you would select your sim's cut out layer rather than the Layer Underneath Copy layer **
Now with that newly merged smooth skin layer selected, go to Filter –> Liquify. (Liquify is covered in another tutorial, and Gimp users use iWarp which is covered in another tutorial as well.)
Look at this bad boy, a tool to be used often really. Tool we need should automatically be selected, if not, it’s the first one. All you gotta do is zoom in, resize your brush to fit the part you're fixing, and fix it really! I usually just push in and out veryyyy slightly until that sharpness goes. You can also just pull out, whatever works! Hell let’s give her a smile while we're at it
. . .
That smile may or may not look ridiculous, but hey! Want to make a slight smirk? There you go c:
And that my lovelies is my skin smoothing for you, but alas we are not done. For we must shade and highlight this~
Tutorial 28: – Skin Shading (Both) (by Eliavah) Level: Beginner If you are still having trouble with something in this tutorial, or need more help, please post here or contact me. Click here for more tutorials
Alright, if you’re reading this, I assumed you read the skin smoothing tutorial! If not, I suggest you go read that, then come back here So we're going to go ahead and use the same photo for some shading & highlighting work! I shade and highlight my sims skin, before doing shadows and lighting (shadows and lighting will be covered in another tutorial, don't fret! It's also not too different from the way I shade my sims skin, but I'll get into that for that tutorial, for now let’s focus on the skin c: )
Disclaimer: I am using a mouse, as opposed to using a tablet for these tutorials. A tablet gives me more control, but I want to show it is not needed completely.
First you want to understand where your light source is. I've circled where I want my light source (or light sources) to be with red. I'm also going to go ahead and place blue where I feel like my sim needs more shadows. Note: The way I shade and highlight my sim's skin doesn't have tooooo much to do with the light source. I do more shadow and lighting work separately. For now I just want to focus on making her skin more realistic, rather than blending her into the background's lighting completely. But this tutorial is the first step to that!
A little confusing I know, but don't worry I'll explain it all. You see because of the way I do my shadows and lighting, the light source doesn't matter entirelllly when I'm shading skin. However you don't want to make shade her skin super dark where light is supposed to hit. But some shading is fine. If this makes sense. . Skin is reflective, remember that in the future.
So I'm going to go ahead and grab a soft airbrush. Now I'm just going to tell you. This method does notttt apply to drawing from scratch. Because we already have a base to work with since we're using sims, it won't look as bad airbrushing onto her skin. But feel free to experiment with different brushes. I know one Sims artist who makes their photos look painted on purpose. However it varies.
Take an airbush, 0% hardness (hardness is not a setting in Gimp). Now super important. Set your flow to 20% -40% and your opacity to 20% (flow is not a setting in Gimp, just set it to opacity). This is important because we can build up color onto our sims skin rather than when having it just at 100% it will blotch our sims skin wayyy too dark. So what you're going to do now, is take the color dropper tool, and find the darkest part of your sims' skin, take it, then go into the color picker, and set it a littttlee darker.
With your airbrush we are just going to simply shade our sim's skin. Shade areas like the thighs, stomach, neck, chin line, nose bridge, cheekbones (if you want), arm creases, etc. Anything that looks like it needs shading really! But remember, don't shade a shoulder that is being hit by light * too * dark. Minor shading is fine to give it depth. I shaded the thigh area, under her bo ** obs, her clevage, under her neck, cheekbones, face, nose bridge, and just anywhere I felt looked better.
(This is a little harder I'll admit with a mouse, but with practice I think you can build a steadier hand c:)
Now let’s do some highlights! With the same brush settings I'm going to put some highlights on these areas.
Take the lightest color on your sim, and make it a litttleee bit lighter. And just do the same thing, but a lesser amount, that you did with the shadows! (Some people use white & black, but I rather use lighter and darker versions of skin color, because I feel like white and black wash the color out a bit and don't look as nice)
This is more or less good enough. Note: If something looks too bright feel free to adjust opacity settings on the layer, or just erase and try again. Also a tip; the undo button is a gift from all gods
So you can touch up here and there, but you're pretty much…..done ! (Note: If the paint bleeds onto the background picture because you used a large brush and it's noticeable, please erase the bleeding. Bleeding = paint from your sim is on the background and noticeable.) Not so hard right? You can leave your photo like this. Or you can take this a step further, and do some extra shading and highlighting. . But with different colors! What do I mean? Well. Take a look at this photo for example:
If you take a look at this, I actually did some shading and highlighting with different colors than my sims skin! But take notice. The overall photo is very blue. Technically her skin is reflecting the blue glowy stuff behind her. Also some of her shading is actually done with a dark blue. I feel like shading and highlighting with a different color gives your skin so much life. I usually do this after the base shading and highlighting (using darker and lighter tones of my sim's skin) So for this photo. I'm going to go ahead and take a dark red, and shade in the darkest spots of my sim. (Still using same brush settings!)
It’s a little harder to notice with this dark red, because the darker version of my sim's skin is actually pretty close to dark red (a dark orange) But let’s say I took a dark blue….
Or maybe a dark purple….or green!
As you can see, this gives my sim's skin more life! I usually use colors depending on the color palette of my background, or overall image.
Now for the highlights. You don't have to use dark blue then light blue, or dark green then light green, in fact, for this original image I had used dark red for shading, and yellow for highlights.
Experiment with colors!
With the same brush settings, just go in like you did before with highlights!
(My image has a yellow/orange/red feel to it, so I used dark red for shadows, and yellow for highlights c:)
You can even layer different colors! Here I'm taking an orange, placing it in the layer underneath my yellow highlighting layer, to give my skin even more pop
And we are done~ I hope all you lovelies come to me with questions, and you're lovely attempts at this tutorial! I am so excited to see you're lovely work ^w^
Done! Let me know if there's any problems with the tutorials. I'll be aiming to release the last few ones soon, but I need to study for the exams and work on an overdue assignment for modeling, so they are on the backburner until this weekend. v.v (Which seems to come and go awfully fast....o-o)
@Eliavah Is it just me or is the shading tut lacking something? I feel like something is missing but can't place my finger on it. Let me know what you think.
Changed the numbers on the previous tutorials because I realized it was wrong. xD Liquify is a correction so should stay with the correction section, rather than jumping from corrections to suddenly skin shading. Lol
I added in a note for the Skin shading tutorial by Eli. Eli doesn't erase her paint, however, I know everyone is different and bound to use a large brush. If your paint bleeds onto the background, meaning you can see the paint of the shadows and highlights on your background, it means you need to erase it! You can avoid the bleeding by being careful with your brush sizes. If you wind up with bleeding, the easiest way to remove it is by selecting your sims layer, using the alt or ctrl method depending on your program, and then going back to the paint layer and using your eraser to remove it from around the sim. Please be careful when skin shading!
Lastly, I am done with my exams (for now, have another quiz and exam next week...*sigh*), and I am now pretty much free to work on this. I will be aiming to get this up this weekend for sure.
Also, to avoid more people dropping I am extending this to 3 weeks for each assignment, and I will be working to get my tutorials done before the weeks are up. This is supposed to be a laidback competition and the last thing I want is people stressing (including me) over getting this stuff done and then dropping, so it's been extended to 3 weeks. This is extremely weird for a modeling competition, but since this one is supposed to be laidback and and fun in the first place, I say whatever. xD
Anyways, I'm excited to get these tutorials up! I hope you enjoy them.
Also, just let to let everyone know, I am not receiving notifications properly. They are glitching for me and only appearing several hours later, so it may take me a while to reply to stuff. I've already contacted @SimGuruDrake, so here's to hoping she can figure it out.
@MizoreYukii I never tried the dodging and burning tools before. I didn't know what they were so never messed with them lol. I tried it out for my Miss World entry and I love it! I can't believe I never tried it lol.
@LeslieM25 I saw, and same thing here. Until I did skin shading I had no idea what they did. xD I forgot to include some info for burning and dodging though. >_< Keep the brushes large (not too large) when going over your area, and keep them on fuzzy brush. The reason we do this is because the highlights/shadows are more concentrated when using a small brush, which makes them more obvious. And the fuzzy brush is so it blends better of course. xD Need to add a few more things as well to that tutorial. v.v
Comments
Off to work on the last tutorials now.
So simple mistakes like that when making poses make it glitchy, so you can make a pose with the hands going a bit too far into the pose, etc. Not sure what else I can suggest for you, as I don't know what type of pose you're making. xD
Okay, thanks!
Did you decide on a country yet?
Good news! Almost done with the tutorials. Will be releasing the skin shading for sure tonight, and I'll probably be releasing a few of the other tutorials.
Bad news: One of the Gimp tutorials will definitely not be up tonight. While digging through Gimp and Google I discovered that one of the easiest ways to do something in PS requires you to download something for Gimp to get the same results, and this requires me to learn something new so you guys can benefit from it. I'm sorry, but there's really no way to avoid this since it requires messing with settings. The good news is that this should solve a lot of problems for those pesky backgrounds, so please be patient! I will be releasing the PS version before it though, so just take a look at it to see what you'll possibly be doing in Gimp.
Thanks for being so patient!
I'm sure you'll do fine! You always do well each week, so I'm fully confident you'll ace this assignment. ^_^
Going to post the shading and smoothing tutorials now. I was originally releasing an updated Bliss' tutorial, but then watching it again I realized it probably wasn't necessary. If there is a lot of confusion, etc., about her video then I'll have to release the updated text version.
Level: Beginner
If you are still having trouble with something in this tutorial, or need more help, please post here or contact me.
Click here for more tutorials
This is an introduction about Skin shading and smoothing. Skin shading and smoothing is when you edit the sims skin and natural shadows and highlights to make them more realistic. Shading is also a way to make them blend better into their environment. Skin smoothing is specifically meant to remove any errors from the skin, so weird discoloration or blemishes that the game creates on the skin.
There are a lot of ways to skin shade, and a few ways to smooth skin. Each one is unique and some people prefer one method over the other. We will be pointing out several methods for shading and smoothing, so choose which one you like best and practice with it. Feel free to switch between them or combine them, or even discover your own method.
Skin smoothing is usually done with the smudge or blur brush where you take the brush, set it on a low to medium opacity/strength, and then gently run over the skin with the brush. You avoid smearing or blurring too much and instead focus on making the skin look “smooth”, taking care not to touch the eyes or other important parts/details to the sim. So don’t run over the belly button, etc., go around it. Another method I have heard of people doing is drawing over the skin with the base skin colors. This is like skin shading though (you’ll see in the tutorials). Another method that can possibly work is using a blur setting on the sim, then going through and sharpening the important details. Anything like freckles and other minor details can be lost though, regardless of the technique used, which is why we go around these parts if we can. If they do become blurred or smudged, you can go back and sharpen or redraw the details.
Eli’s Skin Smoothing
Bliss’ Skin Smoothing (covered in part of her tutorial)
Skin shading has many methods. I have seen some people do multiple techniques in one, and others only do one technique and call it a day. Some methods you will prefer over others, and some methods just don’t work for you. This is where personal tastes start to show up when it comes to editing, so feel free to choose whatever method you like best and not what others like best.
The first thing you want to do before skin shading though is adjust the “brightness and contrast” settings of your sim (works well with backgrounds too). This will make the natural highlights and shadows pop on your sim, leaving you with less work to do in the long run. You don’t want to contrast too much or make her too dark or too light, so only adjust a bit to get the shadows and highlights to pop. Contrast is mainly what you are altering. Of course, you don’t have to mess with the brightness and contrast settings since it can be a personal preference as well. You can also select areas and adjust brightness/contrast so it’s not a harsh effect.
Gimp: “Colors” tab > “Brightness-Contrast”
PS: “Image” tab > “Adjustments” > “Brightness/Contrast”
Next is the easiest method of skin shading. You will use your burning and dodging tool to highlight and shadow your sims features. The tools will be kept on low settings, and on a fuzzy brush, so you don’t overpower the sim. We want to add more shadows and make the current ones better, not destroy them. (Bliss' tutorial goes over burning and dodging for those wanting to see this method. If you're interested in more tutorials for this method contact me, as we did not link them).
Here is an image with only dodging and burning. Note how the highlights and shadows pop more and the areas are now more defined.
The next method is drawing the shadows by hand. You will either use black or white, or the natural shadows and highlights of the skin as the colors you use to draw with. This requires more effort since you will be using multiple layers to create the right effects. This is usually the method that starts branching out and becomes different depending on each person. Some people will even combine burning and dodging with the drawing methods to give certain areas more of a pop.
Eli’s Skin Shading Tutorial
Bliss’ Skin Shading Tutorial
Chan’s Skin Shading Tutorial
Clothes shading is basically skin shading, and so far there isn’t much difference between the two. Clothes shading is also where you would add more shadow details to give the clothes a more realistic look, so adding creases and folds to clothes where you want them to be. This is basically practice for clothes drawing since you only have to focus on adding movement/flow rather than drawing the entire outfit while adding movement/flow at the same time. That probably doesn’t make sense at the moment, but it will when you start drawing clothes.
And there you have it, a basic rundown of skin shading and smoothing. Please refer to the tutorials linked for the methods to get started on skin shading. If any of them don’t make sense, please post so we can help. Also, Bliss’ method is using an older version of Gimp so something may be confusing, and even though she uses Gimp it can be translated to PS, but there are several things you need to be aware of when using it in PS.
Level: Beginner
If you are still having trouble with something in this tutorial, or need more help, please post here or contact me.
Click here for more tutorials
Hallo everyone c: I am Eliavah and I'm here to teach you my way to make skin pretty & smooth, and skin shade! Just a friendly reminder, there are many, many ways to skin smooth & shade, and honestly I experiment with many ways often. So feel free to take some bits of this tutorial and adapt it to your own! Now first things first, you obviously need to have a photo!
This is my Sims Survivor photo, raw and unedited! Yes that is the time blacked out . . . you don't need to see my absurd times I am up xD
So I have my photo cut out onto my background. All I did here was cut her out, place her on background, removed the green (or other background color), which is all covered in previous tutorials, and I rotated her to fit the angle of this specific background. Nothing fancy here! Now as you can see…There is some weird pixilation in her skin...it's not very smooth and looks eh…Also there is some weird sharp spots! A lot to fix huh? Honestly it's really simple, and quick c:
First things first, let’s fix the pixilation! What you're going to do is copy your sims cut out layer, if you didn't cut out your sim, you'd copy your whole image. Honestly though I can't tell you how this works without cutting out, so I highly suggest you cut out your sim c:. We are going to work on the copy image, in case we make any mistakes, we don't have to close and re-open, or even worse, re cut out our sim
Alright take your color dropper tool, and pick a color that is the medium tone for your sim's skin. I usually pick a color around the cheeks of face. Or the forehead if you have a blush on. You can also do around collar bones or stomach, but it doesn't matter. As long as it isn't the lighter or the dark part of your sim's skin tone. It can be a little dark, or a little light, but just make sure it's still in the middle spectrum. Now “ctrl + left click” (Alt + Left click for Gimp) on your Sim Cut Out layer (doesn't matter if it’s the copy or not as long as your selection is your sim). Now go to your Layer Underneath Copy layer. Go to edit ---> Fill and just make sure the setting is Foreground color (“Edit” tab, then “Fill with FG Color” in Gimp, or use bucket tool)! Hit okay and if you hide your sim cut out copy real quick it should look something like that. You don't have to hide your sim cut out copy layer, but you should, to make sure it looks something along the lines as such (Photo marked with 3.)
Now we can get to the good stuff! Go to your Sim Cut Out copy layer (do not touch layer underneath copy layer!). The reason we made that filled with a midtone of our sims skintone, is because what were are about to do is smudge our sims skin basically, but precisely and carefully. However smudging leads to spots turning transparent and weird….but with that layer underneath it will not look transparent! You can either keep your selection around your sim, or deselect it. It really doesn't matter, and we can always reselect it later down the line. I always just deselect my sim, because the lines get in my way just a bit. So let’s grab our smudging tool, set it to a low percentage, I like to use 8%., it’s better to gradually smudge then do too much smudging due to a high percentage and constantly having to undo because it looks too blurred out. Now I usually use a Custom Brush for this, but the sake of this tutorial I will be using a soft 0% hardness brush (hardness is not a setting in Gimp, so ignore that and just choose a hard brush) that can easily be found in the default brush set. Now zoom in and get to smudging! Note though, you do not want to smudge your Sims lips, eyes nose, and any clothes or fine details. You are smudging the weird pixilation and some sharpness away.
Adjusting my brush sizes constantly, bigger brush for bigger areas, smaller for finer details, I smudge all around. The parts I circled in 1. I also smudge, but use smaller brushes to do so. Use a really small brush when doing mouth corners, as you don't want to smudge your lipstick, yikes! I just go around though, and smudge all that weird pixilation away. (This is not a perfect smudge as I'm not accustomed to using a mouse as opposed to tablet, but you can fine detail this more than I c: ) Also you can see that sort of weird sharpness is gone. Awesome! However there are some problems still, some weird sharpness still, and sometimes (not always) smudging causes a weird glow effect to your sim, also we have some of that skin color layer underneath Sim cut out copy layer sticking out!
**Do not smudge any tattoos on your sim**
Don't fret little one! I will help you fix all your problems and more~. Let's go ahead and ctrl click (alt + click in Gimp) on the thumbnail of “Layer Underneath Copy” layer. This should select that fill we did earlier. Go ahead to Select –> Modify → Contract (Select > Shrink in Gimp), and let’s set this to 1 pixel. Now go back to Select, but this time hit Inverse. This basically made it so your selection is not your sim, but around it. We contracted it because we want to erase the little bits. So now just use an eraser, or go to Edit → Clear and bye bye leftovers! See you post thanksgiving
** If you have any glowing around your sim, you would repeat this step, though you would select your sim's cut out layer rather than the Layer Underneath Copy layer **
Now with that newly merged smooth skin layer selected, go to Filter –> Liquify. (Liquify is covered in another tutorial, and Gimp users use iWarp which is covered in another tutorial as well.)
Look at this bad boy, a tool to be used often really. Tool we need should automatically be selected, if not, it’s the first one. All you gotta do is zoom in, resize your brush to fit the part you're fixing, and fix it really! I usually just push in and out veryyyy slightly until that sharpness goes. You can also just pull out, whatever works! Hell let’s give her a smile while we're at it
. . .
That smile may or may not look ridiculous, but hey! Want to make a slight smirk? There you go c:
And that my lovelies is my skin smoothing for you, but alas we are not done. For we must shade and highlight this~
Level: Beginner
If you are still having trouble with something in this tutorial, or need more help, please post here or contact me.
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Alright, if you’re reading this, I assumed you read the skin smoothing tutorial! If not, I suggest you go read that, then come back here
Disclaimer: I am using a mouse, as opposed to using a tablet for these tutorials. A tablet gives me more control, but I want to show it is not needed completely.
First you want to understand where your light source is. I've circled where I want my light source (or light sources) to be with red. I'm also going to go ahead and place blue where I feel like my sim needs more shadows. Note: The way I shade and highlight my sim's skin doesn't have tooooo much to do with the light source. I do more shadow and lighting work separately. For now I just want to focus on making her skin more realistic, rather than blending her into the background's lighting completely. But this tutorial is the first step to that!
A little confusing I know, but don't worry I'll explain it all. You see because of the way I do my shadows and lighting, the light source doesn't matter entirelllly when I'm shading skin. However you don't want to make shade her skin super dark where light is supposed to hit. But some shading is fine. If this makes sense. . Skin is reflective, remember that in the future.
So I'm going to go ahead and grab a soft airbrush. Now I'm just going to tell you. This method does notttt apply to drawing from scratch. Because we already have a base to work with since we're using sims, it won't look as bad airbrushing onto her skin. But feel free to experiment with different brushes. I know one Sims artist who makes their photos look painted on purpose. However it varies.
Take an airbush, 0% hardness (hardness is not a setting in Gimp). Now super important. Set your flow to 20% -40% and your opacity to 20% (flow is not a setting in Gimp, just set it to opacity). This is important because we can build up color onto our sims skin rather than when having it just at 100% it will blotch our sims skin wayyy too dark. So what you're going to do now, is take the color dropper tool, and find the darkest part of your sims' skin, take it, then go into the color picker, and set it a littttlee darker.
With your airbrush we are just going to simply shade our sim's skin. Shade areas like the thighs, stomach, neck, chin line, nose bridge, cheekbones (if you want), arm creases, etc. Anything that looks like it needs shading really! But remember, don't shade a shoulder that is being hit by light * too * dark. Minor shading is fine to give it depth. I shaded the thigh area, under her bo ** obs, her clevage, under her neck, cheekbones, face, nose bridge, and just anywhere I felt looked better.
(This is a little harder I'll admit with a mouse, but with practice I think you can build a steadier hand c:)
Now let’s do some highlights! With the same brush settings I'm going to put some highlights on these areas.
Take the lightest color on your sim, and make it a litttleee bit lighter. And just do the same thing, but a lesser amount, that you did with the shadows! (Some people use white & black, but I rather use lighter and darker versions of skin color, because I feel like white and black wash the color out a bit and don't look as nice)
This is more or less good enough. Note: If something looks too bright feel free to adjust opacity settings on the layer, or just erase and try again. Also a tip; the undo button is a gift from all gods
So you can touch up here and there, but you're pretty much…..done
If you take a look at this, I actually did some shading and highlighting with different colors than my sims skin! But take notice. The overall photo is very blue. Technically her skin is reflecting the blue glowy stuff behind her. Also some of her shading is actually done with a dark blue. I feel like shading and highlighting with a different color gives your skin so much life. I usually do this after the base shading and highlighting (using darker and lighter tones of my sim's skin) So for this photo. I'm going to go ahead and take a dark red, and shade in the darkest spots of my sim. (Still using same brush settings!)
It’s a little harder to notice with this dark red, because the darker version of my sim's skin is actually pretty close to dark red (a dark orange) But let’s say I took a dark blue….
Or maybe a dark purple….or green!
As you can see, this gives my sim's skin more life! I usually use colors depending on the color palette of my background, or overall image.
Now for the highlights. You don't have to use dark blue then light blue, or dark green then light green, in fact, for this original image I had used dark red for shading, and yellow for highlights.
Experiment with colors!
With the same brush settings, just go in like you did before with highlights!
(My image has a yellow/orange/red feel to it, so I used dark red for shadows, and yellow for highlights c:)
You can even layer different colors! Here I'm taking an orange, placing it in the layer underneath my yellow highlighting layer, to give my skin even more pop
And we are done~
@Eliavah Is it just me or is the shading tut lacking something? I feel like something is missing but can't place my finger on it. Let me know what you think.
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I added in a note for the Skin shading tutorial by Eli. Eli doesn't erase her paint, however, I know everyone is different and bound to use a large brush. If your paint bleeds onto the background, meaning you can see the paint of the shadows and highlights on your background, it means you need to erase it! You can avoid the bleeding by being careful with your brush sizes. If you wind up with bleeding, the easiest way to remove it is by selecting your sims layer, using the alt or ctrl method depending on your program, and then going back to the paint layer and using your eraser to remove it from around the sim. Please be careful when skin shading!
Lastly, I am done with my exams (for now, have another quiz and exam next week...*sigh*), and I am now pretty much free to work on this. I will be aiming to get this up this weekend for sure.
Also, to avoid more people dropping I am extending this to 3 weeks for each assignment, and I will be working to get my tutorials done before the weeks are up. This is supposed to be a laidback competition and the last thing I want is people stressing (including me) over getting this stuff done and then dropping, so it's been extended to 3 weeks. This is extremely weird for a modeling competition, but since this one is supposed to be laidback and and fun in the first place, I say whatever. xD
Anyways, I'm excited to get these tutorials up! I hope you enjoy them.
Also, just let to let everyone know, I am not receiving notifications properly. They are glitching for me and only appearing several hours later, so it may take me a while to reply to stuff. I've already contacted @SimGuruDrake, so here's to hoping she can figure it out.
Gone from this place and never coming back. P5 is good
http://lesliem25.tumblr.com/
Happy B-day!
http://lesliem25.tumblr.com/
Everyone missed my birthday. xD
@LeslieM25 I saw, and same thing here. Until I did skin shading I had no idea what they did. xD I forgot to include some info for burning and dodging though. >_< Keep the brushes large (not too large) when going over your area, and keep them on fuzzy brush. The reason we do this is because the highlights/shadows are more concentrated when using a small brush, which makes them more obvious. And the fuzzy brush is so it blends better of course. xD Need to add a few more things as well to that tutorial. v.v
http://lesliem25.tumblr.com/
http://lesliem25.tumblr.com/
Well I felt kind of silly posting it on the thread, so just kind of went "Oh well". xD Thank you though!
I will try and get this sorted tomorrow I've just been really busy